Sucking (in its many forms)

Just a quick check-in.

Things are going very rockily. I'm hoping that maybe today I can go outside and water my tomatoes. I may not be able to do that without help; the last time I tried it without help I was successful, but it cost a lot, emotionally/psychically/spiritually. It cost a lot.

Yesterday or the day before (I forget which), I was actually able to sit at my studio computer and write music. The thing I'm working on takes a lot of notes; I didn't do that many measures, but I did get a lot of notes input. Still got lots 'o work to do on it, but at least I got something done.

Gonna try to keep going on that today.

One of my new herbal treatments doesn't fill me with vim and vigor, but it does at least remove some of the pain (stupid dull aching), and although I do need to take breaks to lie down, at least it's keeping me out of the dark forest of "I have to sleep NOW NOW NOW" that I have been too steadily living in.

I got some stuff done; synch'ed my iPhone, did some corresponding. Did this.

Next, gonna unplug my iPhone and park it back in the bedroom; maybe make a new cup of tea. Right now on my Tall Monitor, I've got an orchestral score I'm getting some ideas from. Gotta take a few minutes to look at yet another score, this one on (who'da thunk it) paper. You remember that stuff, I'm sure. Unquestioned advantage to paper: you can drop it, the cat can crawl over it, you can drop stuff on it, and it still works as perfectly as the day it was first created. This particular score has got all sorts of my scrawls all over it, which make it even more useful. Suck on that, digital world!

Snag a dose of tummy formula (a Chinese patent medicine called "Po Chai," works for me, always has).

Then, if all goes well, back to composing.

The scrabbling through the muck that's a necessary part of the creative process is hard to accept as "necessary," when just sitting up and operating the device is difficult. But, as Tom Hanks described his own process of developing the Forrest Gump voice, "You have to suck, before you can be good."

The sucking en route to good... that, I don't mind at all.

The amount of time I have to take sitting at the machine, especially with everything that's going on physically (or not, depending on what we're talking about)... that's hard.

Actually, it sucks. But didn't I just say that sucking en route to good doesn't bother me?

Ah, there's suck, and then there's suck.

Which, I guess...sucks?